Friday, 4 June 2010

O Muse! Of the unsuccessful and unstoried St. Louis Browns lineup I sing

At first base the Brownies had Hank Arft -- no kidding --At second who but the unmemorable Bobby YoungAt short the scrawny yet not untalented Billy Hunter At third a variety of persons including the unsung Fred Marsh And the washed up Vern StephensWho hit the highest popups in the entire universe

In left field grazed the confused but impassive Dick KokosWhose visage lay inert in my mind until one minute agoWhen I remembered that baseball card from around 1950 Which showedA beautiful aerial view of Dick Kokos swingingOr ratherThe conclusion of his swingWhich seemed to involve Dick in a strange state of contortionWhereby his bat having achieved a 360-degree arc Came around and hit him in the back of the head

Meanwhile in center field there was the baby faced Polish hopefulJohnny GrothAnd in right the handsome and intense Jim Rivera who perfected the kamikaze slide Not to forget the deep thighed Don LenhardtThe insouciant George Schmees Or the hometown minihero Korean War vet and last player ever to debut as a Brownie Jim Pisoni

10 comments:

Curtis Roberts
said...

Waking up to this was wonderful. I felt myself heading somewhere I didn't want to be and this brought me back to a (re)fresh(ed) and better start. Thank you. Reading the Eddie Gaedel saga (the lighter parts of it, including the "I don't want to be taken to your leader. I've already met him." remark, which should be carved in stone somewhere) has a smile on my face still.

On the occasion to which you allude, Curtis, the showman Bill Veeck, who'd masterminded the original stunt with Eddie and the Browns, hired him once again, this time in Chicago, to descend on a sky ladder from a helicopter with three other "little people", dressed up as men from Mars, to land at second base at Comiskey Park; where they were summarily "captured" at raygun-point.

(That event became the anti-climax of my epic sequel, "Son of Interesting Losers".)

But Eddie fell to drink and within a very short time died of a heart attack, at 31.

One postscript I find touching, Bob Cain, the Detroit pitcher who'd issued a base on balls to Eddie on that famous one-and-only plate appearance, was one of the very few people to attend his funeral in Chicago.

In the days before weight rooms and steroids, ballplayers actually resembled real humans.

Including, certainly, Don Knotts.

And that fellow's is only the second (or maybe third) largest tobacco chaw in the photo.

The guy by the post appears to have the largest one.

In those days there was a continuous spitting of brown juice on and around the playing field. Later on, hygiene dictated a shift to sunflower seeds. Now the players sit in the dugout chewing and spitting sunflower seeds.

Though there is, remarkably, one present player who appears to PRETEND to be chewing sunflower seeds, while not actually putting any sunflower seeds in his mouth, and then to PRETEND to be spitting them out.

The persistence of cultural mores in this area might stump even Margaret Mead.

(A telltale sign of inexperience, in the old days, was the swallowing of a tobacco chaw on the playing field; this typically only happened to players who were "green", that is, rookies; and of course, had they not been green before the swallowing, one imagines they were definitely so, after.)

Tom, the "handsome and intense Jim Rivera," I remember him from the later part of his career, would be the late 50's, with Chicago White Sox. Yes, the kamikaze slide, and also the diving catches over the wall as picture here.

Don't see many suitcoats and ties at the ballpark anymore.

All this and in the stands, taking notes on the back of the score card, Margaret Mead ... thanks.

Well, in my youthful secret heart (and open mind) the devotion was all White Sox -- after all, hometown, and worked at their games too -- so Jungle Jim was of course a great favorite. He must have shaved once in his life, right before the photo was taken for that baseball card. He was among Veeck's successful rescue projects, having at one point done time for what may have been a bad rap. Maybe he was too dashing and gregarious for his own good.

He is, gods be praised, still alive, by the way. One of a dwindling crew of Brownie survivors.

Back in the day when "ballplayers actually resembled humans." Yes, indeed, I remember when Jackie Jensen refused to fly and would bus everywhere when with the Red Sox. And the Jimmy Piersall story - how we loved these guys, who were flawed like us, ballplayers who worked construction or the farm or owned bars in the off season or at retirement. The Brooklyn Dodgers living in the neighborhood, walking the streets and talking to neighbors.

Somehow it doesn't seem like nostalgia when we talk of humanness ... it seems, in its way, like loss, like sorrow.